With the future of Decapitated now very much in doubt, a band from the opposite end of Poland sounds ready to perhaps take their place on the sonic throne. Hailing from Szczecin, near the border with Germany and the Baltic Sea, Nex show themselves to be a rather fearsome foursome as they blend death metal with plenty of groove on their self-released full-length.

The World Collapses is a thick, imposing, bruiser of an album that sacrifices some of death metal's inherent velocity for sheer heaviness. While there are blast-beaty parts throughout – and the album opens with Behemoth-like fury on “Silence” - the tempos tend to be more deliberate, accentuating the weighty riffs and deep, occasionally djenty bottom end.

Songs like “Hate,” “Creation of the Future” and “God” absolutely crush – and are given some extra oomph by the album's bold, modern production. The recording was overseen by Filip “Heinrich” Hałucha, who played bass on Decapitated's 2011 comeback album Carnival Is Forever which focused more on groove and less on the technicality of their previous releases. Some of that definitely rubbed off here as just about everything sounds huge – as self-released albums go, you'd be hard pressed to find one that sounds bigger than this.

And while that's all good and fine, Nex also have crafted a pretty solid batch of songs from which to summon the thunder. For relative rookies – having only released the EP Totalitarian Leader in 2015 - these guys are accomplished songwriters, building enough melody into their heaving grooves to keep things from becoming too turgid or intimidating. The epic closer “Circles” also offers some welcome moodiness and atmosphere, while “Ten Tables of Faith” and “The Industrial Democracy” dabble in stutter-step complexity that livens up the pace a bit.

Still, if heavy is your thing, Nex absolutely deliver, and The World Collapses is a debut that certainly deserves to be heard.